• Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 at his family home in Atlanta, Georgia. King was an eloquent Baptist minister and leader of the civil-rights movement in America from the Mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. King promoted non-violent means to achieve civil-rights reform and was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

King's grandfather was a Baptist preacher. His father was pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. King earned his own Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozier Theological Seminary in 1951 and earned his Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University in 1955.

While at seminary King became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent social protest. On a trip to India in 1959 King met with followers of Gandhi. During these discussions he became more convinced than ever that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

As a pastor of a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama, King lead a Black bus boycott. He and ninety others were arrested and indicted under the provisions of a law making it illegal to conspire to obstruct the operation of a business. King and several others were found guilty, but appealed their case. As the bus boycott dragged on, King was gaining a national reputation. The ultimate success of the Montgomery bus boycott made King a national hero.

Dr. King's 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail" inspired a growing national civil rights movement. In Birmingham, the goal was to completely end the system of segregation in every aspect of public life (stores, no separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, etc.) and in job discrimination. Also in 1963, King led a massive march on Washington DC where he delivered his now famous, "I Have A Dream" speech. King's tactics of active nonviolence (sit-ins, protest marches) had put civil-rights squarely on the national agenda.

On April 4, 1968, King was shot by James Earl Ray while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was only 39 at the time of his death. Dr. King was turning his attention to a nationwide campaign to help the poor at the time of his assassination. He had never wavered in his insistence that nonviolence must remain the central tactic of the civil-rights movement, nor in his faith that everyone in America would some day attain equal justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr.Civil-Rights Leader1929 - 1968 The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands   in moments of comfort and convenience, but where      he stands at times of challenge and controversy.                                                                            —Martin Luther King, Jr.

• 1929 Born on January 15, in Atlanta, Georgia

• 1948 Graduates from Morehouse College

• 1953 Marries Coretta Scott

• 1955 Earns a doctoral degree1956Dr. King's house is bombed

• 1958 Dr. King publishes his first book, Stride Toward Freedom

• 1963 Dr. King gives his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

• 1964 Dr. King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

• 1968 Dr. King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee

• 1986 Martin Luther King Jr. Day is declared a national holiday in the U.S.

• The History of Martin Luther King Day• Who originated the idea of a national holiday in

honor of MLK?• by Shmuel Ross and David Johnson• • It took 15 years to create the federal

Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. Congressman John Conyers, Democrat from Michigan, first introduced legislation for a commemorative holiday four days after King was assassinated in 1968. After the bill became stalled, petitions endorsing the holiday containing six million names were submitted to Congress.

• Conyers and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, Democrat of New York, resubmitted King holiday legislation each subsequent legislative session. Public pressure for the holiday mounted during the 1982 and 1983 civil rights marches in Washington.

• Congress passed the holiday legislation in 1983, which was then signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. A compromise moving the holiday from Jan. 15, King's birthday, which was considered too close to Christmas and New Year's, to the third Monday in January helped overcome opposition to the law.

• National Consensus on the Holiday• A number of states resisted celebrating the holiday.

Some opponents said King did not deserve his own holiday—contending that the entire civil rights movement rather than one individual, however instrumental, should be honored. Several southern states include celebrations for various Confederate generals on that day. Arizona voters approved the holiday in 1992 after a tourist boycott. In 1999, New Hampshire changed the name of Civil Rights Day to Martin Luther King, Jr., Day

Timeline

Quotes from Martin Luther King• ON THE PROBLEM • "Only 7.8 percent of the Negro students in the

South are attending integrated schools this year, a hundred years after our emancipation from slavery. At this pace it will take 92 more years to integrate the public schools of the South." — 1960

• "I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs, and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered." — 1964, on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize

• "We must have our freedom now. We must have the right to vote. We must have equal protection of the law." — 1965, after march on Alabama state capital

• "I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate rest rooms, partly because the separate was always unequal, and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self-respect." — 1958

• "Segregation...not only harms one physically but injures one spiritually...It scars the soul...It is a system which forever stares the segregated in the face, saying 'You are less than...' 'You are not equal to...'"

• ON THE SOLUTIONS • "We believe in law and order. We are not advocating

violence. We want to love our enemies. If I am stopped, our work will not stop, for what we are doing is right." — 1956, in Montgomery, Alabama

• "Three simple words can describe the nature of the social revolution that is talking place and what Negroes really want. They are the words "all," "now," and "here."

• "Green power — that's the kind of power we need." • "You can't win against a political structure where you

don't have the votes. But you can win against an economic power structure when you have the...power to make the difference between a merchant's profit and loss." — 1962, after demonstrations in Albany, Georgia

• "Equality means dignity. And dignity demands a job and a paycheck that lasts through the week." — 1963

I have a Dream• I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties

and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."

• I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

• I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

• I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character...

• I have a dream today.• I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama ... will be

transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

• I have a dream today.• I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted,

every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

• This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

• Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. • Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of

Pennsylvania!• Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!• Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!• But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of

Georgia!• Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!• Let freedom ring from every hill and mole hill of Mississippi.• From every mountainside, let freedom ring.• When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every

village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last

Further Reading

Adams, Russell, Great Negroes Past and Present, pp. 106-107. Chicago, Afro-Am Publishing Co., 1963.

Bennett, Lerone, Jr., What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Chicago, Johnson, 1964.

I Have a Dream: The Story of Martin Luther King in Text and Pictures. New York, Time Life Books, 1968.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., The Measure of a Man. Philadelphia. The Christian Education Press, 1959. Two devotional addresses.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., Strength to Love. New York, Harper & Row, 1963. Sixteen sermons and one essay entitled "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence."

King, Martin Luther, Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. New York, Harper, 1958.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience. New York, Harper & Row, 1968.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? New York, Harper & Row, 1967.

Except from Newspaper Articiles published time of King’s Death:

• 1968: Martin Luther King shot dead• The American black civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther

King, has been assassinated. Dr King was shot dead in the southern US city of Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a march of sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions

• He was shot in the neck as he stood on a hotel balcony and died in hospital soon afterwards.

• Reverend Jesse Jackson was on the balcony with Dr King when the single shot rang out.

• "He had just bent over. I reckon if he had been standing up he would not have been hit in the face," said Mr Jackson.

• I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has taken Dr King

• President Lyndon Johnson Police in Memphis were put on alert for a "well-dressed" white man who is said to have dropped an automatic rifle after the shooting and escaped in a blue car.

• There were early signs of rioting in Memphis after Dr King's death and 4,000 members of the National Guard were drafted into the city.

• A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been ordered to ward off disturbances.

• The US President, Lyndon Johnson, has postponed a trip to Hawaii for peace talks on Vietnam.

• The president said he was "shocked and saddened" by the civil rights leader's death.

• "I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has taken Dr King who lived by non-violence," Mr Johnson said

boycott an act of protest in which a group of people stop buying from or dealing with a store or company in order to obtain certain demands

civil rights the personal and property rights of a person, recognized by a government and guaranteed by a constitution and its law

discrimination the unfair treatment of an individual, gorup or race

Freedom Riders groups of blacks and whites from Washington, D. C. who traveled through the South in 1961 to protest segregation

protest an act of complaint or display of objection to an idea

segregation the policy of separating members of a certain group or race from a main body or group

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) a gorup started by Martin Luther King, Jr., that protested segregation by non violent actions

IndexBloody Sunday, 62 King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Civil Rights, 13, 24, birth and childhood 15-21

Congress of Racial Equalitly children, 35, 45, 65

(CORE) 52 death threats, 37-38

Crozer Seminary 25-27 education, 18-19, 21, 24

Discrimination 9, 32 41, 71 encourages blacks to vote

73,82, 92 35-37, 62-69

Ebenezer Baptist Church imprisoned, 49, 53 62

25, 28, 31 marriage 23-28

Farmer, Jamess , 51-56 murdered, 61-62

Freedom Riders 52-52 as preacher, 9,12,34,

Gandhi, Mohandas, 26-27 speeches 11-13, 17-18

Glossary

Martin Luther King Jr. I

1. What year did King win the Nobel Peace Prize?

2. Who introduced legislation in Congress to

have a Holiday in Dr. King’s honor?

3. How did President Johnson respond to Dr. King’s death?

4. On what page would you find information about Dr. King’s education

5. What does segregation mean?6. What occupation did Dr. King’s

father have?7. Do you think the United States

has reached Dr. King’s Dream? Why?

8. What is Mohandas Gandhi’s Philosophy?

Martin Luther King Jr. I

1. What year did King win the Nobel Peace Prize?

2. Who introduced legislation in Congress to

have a Holiday in Dr. King’s honor?

3. How did President Johnson respond to Dr. King’s death?

4. On what page would you find information about Dr. King’s education

5. What does segregation mean?6. What occupation did Dr. King’s

father have?7. Do you think the United States

has reached Dr. King’s Dream? Why?

8. What is Mohandas Gandhi’s Philosophy?

Martin Luther King II

1. Who shot and killed Dr. King?

2. Which president signed the paper that

made Jan. 15 a national holiday?

3. Who was on the balcony with Dr. King when he was shot?

4. On what page would you find information

about speeches Dr. King made?

5. What are Civil Rights?

6. What event brought Dr. King national

attention?

7. What year was the “I have a Dream Speech”?

8. What was Martin Luther King’s Dream?

Martin Luther King II

1. Who shot and killed Dr. King?

2. Which president signed the paper that

made Jan. 15 a national holiday?

3. Who was on the balcony with Dr. King when he was shot?

4. On what page would you find information

about speeches Dr. King made?

5. What are Civil Rights?

6. What event brought Dr. King national

attention?

7. What year was the “I have a Dream Speech”?

8. What was Martin Luther King’s Dream?